The Bank Job (R) Lionsgate (110 min.) Directed by Roger Donaldson. With Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows. Now playing in New Jersey. TWO AND A HALF STARS

Many directors have specialties, but Roger Donaldson has developed a rather peculiar one -- remakes of other people's movies.

He made the last version of the Captain Bligh story, "The Bounty." He had probably his biggest hit with "No Way Out," a redo of the Ray Milland thriller "The Big Clock." Then there was the badly advised retelling of Sam Peckinpah's "The Getaway," with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.

His latest, "The Bank Job," is ostensibly an original. But sometimes it feels a little like a retread, too.

The story of a real-life London heist, it's populated by characters who'd be at home in a dozen different British caper films or old-time POW pictures -- the posh con man known as "the Major," the darkly ethnic "tunnel king" who's a genius at digging, the sweetly dim sidekicks we know won't make it 'til the final fadeout. And, of course, our hero -- a stoic, straight-talking leader who's only in this to make one last score.

Actually, what is original here is what feels a little fake. According to the script, this real-life 1971 bank heist was actually orchestrated by the British Secret Service, which used the amateur robbers as a diversionary tactic. The real objective was to stop a black-power extremist from pulling Princess Margaret into a sex scandal.

Given that kind of creativity, I think I'd rather stick with the cliches.

That "The Bank Job" keeps you interested has little to do, frankly, with Donaldson, who remains a flat-footed filmmaker. There isn't a single interesting shot in the entire movie, or even a real feel for the period. Sequences that should be unbearably tense -- the initial tunneling, a false-alarm discovery scare, a gruesome torture scene -- simply happen.

Still, it mixes in enough real people and events to keep you guessing (or, possibly, annoyed) for most of it. And it ratchets up the intrigues nicely in the last half of the film -- as the robbers, having gotten away with the loot, now have to figure out how to hold on to it.

You think coming up with a plan to break into a vault is tough? Wait until after you succeed -- and discover that you have the cops, the criminals and the secret police all in heated pursuit.

The bullet-headed Jason Statham, who seems to be in every British thriller made these days -- I think they passed a law -- is nicely assured as the ringleader, a quieter part than usual for him (although you can almost see his relief when he finally gets to throw some sharp elbows and head-butts around). David Suchet, once TV's brilliant Hercule Poirot, slips easily over to the other side of the law as a ruthless SoHo vice king.

There's nothing here as lively and original as "In Bruges" or as obviously arty as the recent "London to Brighton." But if we are in a mini-renaissance of U.K. thrillers, even the so-so "The Bank Job" is a good reminder of what made them work to begin with -- working-class settings, realistic capers and rough-edged, violent heroes who always end up discovering there's somebody even rougher and more violent waiting 'round the bend.